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h2.Rose Pink
Story by BunnyPen
[section=Story]The jungle mist hung low, thick with the scent of damp ferns and lingering beast. Somewhere beyond the ferns, the roar of the Anjanath still echoed faintly, but the hunt was done. It took a long time full of swears, item consumptions and even more swears along the way, but the hunter and felyne had come out on top.

He hissed through his teeth and rummaged through his pouch. Green sparkle of a Mega Potion caught the light, and he downed it in one practiced gulp. A bottle of Nullberry Extract came next, bitter and sharp on the tongue. But the bite didn’t stop burning. Worse, the pain started to creep, tendrils of heat climbing up toward his hips and down into his calves.

“Meowster?” called a high pitched voice from the underbrush.

His Palico companion popped out, ears perked and tail twitching. The felyne’s oversized claws clacked nervously against a stone as he stepped closer.

Mewouch! That bite looks clawfully nasty! You shoulda used an Herbal Powder and a Cleanser Booster, just to be purr-sitive!”

The hunter grunted, not answering. His hand, stained from the potion’s residue, pressed hard against the wound. His legs ached with a bone deep intensity. Not soreness. Not injury. A kind of pressure, growing from within, like something beneath his skin was pushing outward.

Poison?

His armor groaned in protest.

He looked down as the leather straps around his thighs pulled taut. The greaves warped subtly, forced wider. The fabric underneath tore with a sound like splitting bark. His boots, once snug around his feet, bulged. Something inside them pulsed. His toes were swelling, lengthening.

Staggering upright, bracing against the tree. His right foot struck the ground hard. No longer the booted foot of a man, but thicker, broader, the toes already ending in dull claws. His skin beneath the armor was taking on a new tone, flushed with pink and dusted in faint feather ike bristles. The air buzzed with heat.

He tried to breathe evenly, but the creaking of his armor grew louder.

His shin guards split with a crack, metal snapping where it could no longer contain the shifting mass of muscle beneath. The hunter stumbled forward with a grunt, catching himself on the tree bark as his knees buckled.

“Meowster! Y-your legs!” the felyne yelped, now halfway behind a root with only his helmet peeking out. “Ya’re growin’ big as a brute wyvern! That ain’t normal!”

He wanted to yell back, to tell the palico to shut it and toss him a trap or something useful, but his jaw ached. The words wouldn't come. His tongue felt thick in his mouth.

Instead, a low rumble escaped his throat. It didn’t sound human. The bones in his legs popped, he clenched his fists, nails digging into his palms.  His stance was shifting too, dragging him downward. Forward. His heels pulled up off the forest floor, and with a twitch, the tendons behind them tightened until they no longer looked like human legs at all.

His thighs swelled outward, armor biting into the flesh until another buckle burst. The skin there was turning leathery, pink, speckled in rough patterns like scale. The faint bristles were thickening by the second, forming a dark scruff climbing up along his hips and spine.

He let out a growl and slammed his palm into the tree, breathing ragged.

This definitely wasn't poison. This was something else.

The palico’s voice came again, smaller now.

“Meowster... w-what’s happenin’ to ya?”

The hunter buckled forward with a guttural snarl, one hand clawing at his thigh, the other braced against the tree to stay upright. His breath came in heavy gasps, each exhale steaming in the thick air. Heat surged through his lower body like molten fire, and the pressure in his legs reached a breaking point. His breath steamed in the air.

His thighs continued to balloon outward with a series of pops and snaps. The reinforced greaves didn’t stand a chance. With one convulsive jerk of his growing legs, the entire structure of metal and leather burst apart. Shards of crimson plate and snapped buckles flew into the mud.

What remained was no longer human.

His thighs, now massive and muscular, flexed with unnatural power. The skin had stretched to accommodate their new girth, now flushed a dark pink tone and lined with emerging patterns of rough, pebbled hide. Black bristles jutted from his hips and the back of his thighs, trailing like fur down toward the swelling mass of his calves.

“Meowster?” came a tiny voice, nearly a whisper now.

With a wet crack, his left boot split clean in two, seams unraveling as his foot surged outward, too wide, too long, toes no longer toes but thick, muscular talons. His right followed with another crunch, the armor clattering to the ground around him like broken shell.

His feet spread against the earth, now enormous and beastly. Each toe tipped in a thick, obsidian claw that curved cruelly toward the dirt, sharp and natural. The middle claw on each foot was especially large, hooked like a sickle.

The ground quaked with every shaky step he took. His new claws dug ruts into the jungle floor as his body adjusted to the beastly legs. Behind him, a tail had begun to stir, thick at the base and twitching with primal instinct. Bristled fur ran along its top ridge like a banner of wildness.

The hunter turned slightly, breathing hard, and looked down at what he had become.

His thighs flexed again, involuntarily. They were monstrous. Powerful. Built to charge, to leap, to crush.

The palico was frozen behind a root, eyes wide and watery. His companion, his hunter, was becoming something else. And the transformation wasn’t slowing.

The base of his spine surged, bulging beneath his belt as the skin swelled and thickened. A low tearing sound followed, fabric and leather being forced apart thread by thread. Then, with a fleshy snap, the forming tail that was already sizeably thick, burst free from beneath his armor. It flopped limply for a heartbeat, glistening and heavy, before beginning to thrash with its own weight.

Thick. That was the first word that came to mind, thick beyond anything human.

The tail pulsed outward with every second, muscle pouring down its length in waves. Each throb widened its base, packing on girth that made his altered thighs seem almost lean by comparison. The flesh was a deepening shade of pink, but dark ridges were rising along the top, rough and scaled, giving way to thick bristled black fur that sprouted in a heavy crest from the middle of the tail down to its tip.

It lashed once, an awkward swing that tore a groove into the soil behind him. Another twitch followed, more confident, and the sheer momentum of it nearly sent him forward onto all fours.

The tail curved in a wide arc behind him, thicker at the root than a tree trunk, tapering to a rounded but deadly end. The fur bristled with instinct, twitching and flexing like it had a mind of its own. Each movement sent ripples along the entire limb, emphasizing the raw power built into its mass. The weight dragged behind him, anchoring his shifting body lower, pushing his balance permanently toward a beast’s posture.

Something in his instincts clicked.

This wasn’t just a limb. It was a weapon. A counterbalance. A signal of dominance.

The palico peeked up from behind his cover, voice a shaky squeak.

“Th-that tail... it’s huge, Meowster... I don’t think we can fit that on the wyvern ride home...”

The hunter didn’t respond.

His claws flexed in the dirt. The tail lifted, casting a looming shadow behind him.

The tail slammed into the dirt with a deep whump, scattering leaves and shaking the underbrush. The hunter groaned, hunching over. His breath rasped against the inside of his helmet, fogging the visor. Heat coursed up his spine, and the skin along his back began to twitch uncontrollably.

There was a flecking of pinprick, tiny stiff hairs erupting all across his skin and the base of his tailbone, but it quickly spread, marching up his lower back in a growing tide. Coarse, black bristles pushed through his skin in dense clusters, sprouting into a thick, wild pelt.

They crept higher, curling over his spine, blanketing his shoulder blades, rising like a mane. The hunter gritted his teeth, spine arching involuntarily. His posture shifted again, pulled forward by the tail, by the weight in his thighs, and now the tension ripping through his back.

He looked like something half-born, a creature caught between two worlds. His legs were fully beast, his arms still mostly human, but the torso in between was twisted, hunched, swaying with awkward strength.

And his back... his back was feral. Tufts of fur flared outward like the scruff of a threatened predator, and where skin remained, it gleamed with the pink sheen of freshly forming hide.

A pulse of pressure surged into his biceps, one, then the other, and they widened outward. The hunter staggered to his feet as the muscle packed on in sudden bursts, cords tightening and bulging beneath the sleeves of his armor. Metal groaned. Straps cut deep into his swelling shoulders, holding fast for only a few seconds longer.

Crreeee- CRACK!

The pauldrons burst open, plates flying free and spinning into the mud. His biceps thickened again, now swollen to grotesque proportions. The skin stretched tight, flushed and gleaming, the faint beginnings of scale glinting across the inner crook of each elbow.

His forearms followed suit, lengthening slightly, but it was the upper arms that bore the brunt, bulging, twitching with every breath, every twitch of his claws. They flexed with a strength he couldn’t have imagined before.

Only his chestplate and helmet remained.

The armor clung desperately to his torso, riding up slightly as his posture shifted further forward. His neck had thickened, the fur creeping up beneath the edges of his collar. His breathing had changed too, deeper, guttural. More like the huff of a wyvern than the gasp of a man.

He took one slow step forward, claws digging into the earth, tail sweeping behind him with effortless force.

The hunter was fading.

He turned his head slowly, visor glinting under the jungle’s light. His breathing had deepened into low, animalistic huffs, fog curling from the mouth slits of the helmet. Behind the mask, whatever human thoughts remained were tangled, buried under instinct and heat and change.

With a guttural growl, the hunter lurched forward, his massive claws carving up dirt in his wake. His thick tail whipped for balance as he threw an arm out toward the palico. The bicep flared with grotesque power, and the oversized hand swiped hard through the air.

“Meowster, n-no!” the felyne cried out, diving behind a thick root. The claws missed by inches, carving a gouge in the bark above his head. “Snap out of it! I’m yer partner! You remember me, right?!”

The hunter’s body jerked to a stop. He let out a rasping exhale, thick with confusion and anger. His arms hung low at his sides, shaking. He stumbled a step forward, then another, before his legs gave out beneath him.

He fell to his knees with a thud that made the ground quake.

His massive biceps, once powerful and swollen with monstrous might, began to twist and shrink. They pulled inward with a strange, sloshing tension. The thick arms that had cracked steel now shivered and bent at unnatural angles. Muscle retracted like coiling snakes, pulling the upper limbs close to his chest. The elbows shifted higher. Shoulders hunched forward.

He snarled, clawing feebly at the dirt, but his arms were smaller now. Compact. Blunt. The once-dominant limbs shriveled, reshaped into squat, thick-jointed things built less for combat, more for balance. His claws still gleamed at the tips, deadly and curved, but his reach had diminished. What had been mighty hunter’s arms were now vestigial shadows of their former self, clutched tight against his chestplate.

The Palico peeked again, trembling, clutching a smoke bomb he knew would do nothing.

“M-Meowster?” he whispered.

The creature looked up.

With a sharp metallic snap, the helmet’s clasp failed. The visor shot free, clattering to the jungle floor in a spray of mud and leaves. What lay beneath was not a hunter’s face.

It was something caught in the terrifying moment between man and monster.

His eyes were sunken, reptilian, the pupils drawn into narrow slits that gleamed gold beneath the canopy light. The skin across his face had lost its human color entirely, turned flushed pink and textured with ridges. Cheeks were gone. Bone structure shifted beneath the surface, stretching.

The front of his face pushed forward, boneand skin stretching as a full, monstrous muzzle took form. His jaw elongated in real time, pulling away from what little remained of his human expression. Sharp ridges formed above his eyes, casting shadows over the long, emerging maw. His nose flattened, nostrils flaring wider as they twisted toward the end of the growing snout.

A glint of ivory caught the light, then another.

Huge teeth erupted from the jaws, each one jagged and deadly, built not for show but for ripping and tearing. They pushed past his lips as they curled back, the corners of his mouth tearing slightly to accommodate the new size. Saliva dripped between them, trailing in thick strands as the jaw slowly parted for a rasping, guttural breath.

Then it hit.

A final wave of pressure, hot, dense, and consuming, rolled through his body like a shockwave. His frame trembled as muscle packed itself into his chest, arms, and torso one last time. His back arched violently, fur flaring, ribs expanding with the sound of splitting sinew and groaning bone. The chestplate held for barely a heartbeat longer, stretched too far, too tight.

POP.

The armored chestpiece exploded outward, spinning into the jungle like shrapnel. What remained was raw, beastly bulk, an upper body wrapped in thick muscle, layered with hide, and draped in the dark crest of bristled fur that ran from his neck to the base of his tail. His shoulders rose and fell with each breath, now rounded and powerful, forcing his reduced arms to jut awkwardly forward.

Golden eyes fixed on the Palico, once its partner, now prey. A snarl rolled deep in its throat, low and wet, teeth bared in a flash of slick ivory. The snout quivered with the scent. The scent of something familiar. Something it once trusted.

It split the jungle air like thunder, shaking birds from the canopy and silencing even the buzzing insects. The Palico flinched, ears flattened, whiskers trembling. His paws scrambled backward.

“M-Meowster! No!”

But the creature lunged.

It charged on powerful hindlegs, tail crashing through brush like a fallen tree, claws gouging great furrows in the dirt. The Palico ran, darting through roots and vines, heart pounding, armor clinking with every terrified step.

Behind him, the Anjanath roared again, louder this time, furious and unchained. The ground trembled beneath its steps.

Just as the beast lunged for a final pounce, vines erupted from the ground.

THWACK! A trap net exploded upward with force, yanking the transformed hunter’s limbs mid air. The beast howled in rage, struggling wildly as the net yanked taut, bringing him crashing down to the jungle floor with a quaking thud. Vines snapped, but not enough.

From the brush, hunters emerged, his group, his comrades. Their armor gleamed in the filtered light, weapons drawn but lowered. They watched in silence, stunned by what they had caught.

The creature bucked and roared again, pinned beneath the net, tail thrashing violently. Spittle flew from its jaws. The gold eyes burned with confusion and fury.

The Palico peeked out from behind a mossy stone, eyes wide and damp.

He stepped forward, slowly.

“...You’re still in there, right?”

The beast stilled.

For a single, frozen moment, its gaze met his. The growl in its throat faded. The tail dropped.

But the moment passed.

The Anjanath thrashed again, snapping vines, muscles rippling with raw, untamed power. It was no longer a hunter. Not really..

The trap held, for now.

It writhed beneath the net, its snarls muffled only slightly by the tension of coiled vines and the weight of its own heaving breath. One had stepped too close.

“Careful!” barked the group’s leader, but it was too late.

A massive claw lashed out from beneath the net’s edge, catching the nearest hunter across the thigh. Blood spattered into the dirt as the hunter cried out, stumbling backward, clutching at the torn fabric of their leg.

“I’m fine! Just a scratch!” they hissed, gritting their teeth. “It didn’t get deep, I'm still standing.”

The others looked on warily, some glancing at the creature beneath the net. The beast had stopped thrashing.

It watched the wounded hunter.

Hours passed. The creature was sedated, hauled off in chains and reinforced cart harnesses, its heavy breaths echoing through the jungle trees long after it was gone.

Back at camp, torches flickered in the humid dark. The injured hunter sat alone by the fire, their leg freshly bandaged, helmet resting at their side. One of their companions approached with a bowl of herbal mix and a tired smile.

“You sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah. Just stiff,” the wounded hunter muttered.

They scratched at their arm.

“Legs are feelin’ weird, though. Kinda... tight.”

The scratching had stopped. The hunter sat still, staring into the flames, lips pressed tight. The leg of their armor creaked, subtly. A bulge twitched beneath the plating, shifting the strap near the thigh.

The second hunter tilted their head.

“You sure, you sure, you’re okay?”

The scratched one didn’t respond at first. Their hand moved slowly to their other leg.

It, too, was starting to tighten.

Their fingers dug into the growing muscle beneath the fabric. Skin flushed pink under the torchlight. Something shifted under the surface, thickening. Stretching.

“I think I need... some air,” they mumbled, voice low and trembling.

They stood, legs wobbling slightly.

And the transformation began anew.[/section]